Centrify for SaaS Unifies Identities, Mobile Management

How many passwords do the employees in your organization manage? How many apps and software require unique user logins? If you're like most companies, the answer could be "too many to count."

Passwords have become easy to hack and hard for IT departments and employees to manage. But Centrify claims its User Suite, SaaS Edition, can help organizations eliminate password sprawl, while giving IT managers centralized access to an ever-increasing number of SaaS apps and mobile devices.

Moving Beyond Passwords

Passwords are notoriously flawed. If left to the user to create them, most people ignore best practices and use common phrases instead — which are notoriously easy to hack. If you force users to include a variety of special characters, passwords become complicated and difficult to remember, creating significant obstacles to the users. While contemplating the future of passwords, many security experts have proposed a variety of ways to make protecting information more secure -- from biometrics to a two-step authentication process to single sign-on (SSO).

Centrify for SaaS claims organizations can solve the password problems and better secure devices with a single sign-on process. SSO not only makes it easier for end users to locate, lock or wipe their mobile devices as well as reset their Microsoft Active Directory passwords. It also provides IT departments with an easy-to-deploy, cloud-based service. This service delivers centralized access control and visibility to SaaS app usage and integrated mobile application management with seamless integration to Active Directory or Centrify’s cloud user service.

But Centrify for SaaS isn't just about SSO. It also provides additional functionality aimed at taking a more holistic approach to mobile device management and security.

Centrify now supports cloud-only deployments for non-Active Directory users, as well as a hybrid Active Directory and cloud deployment for external users, making it the industry’s most flexible Identity-as-a-Service (IDaaS) offering.

Global Enterprise Support

Centrify also provides global support and regional separation so customers can deploy and keep their data in a preferred region. Centrify also delivers internationalization and localization support with more than a dozen local languages — unique in the IDaaS market — and global support, around the clock.

A More Unified State of Information

As more and more consumer technologies begin to add layers of additionally security to their apps, it's only natural that organization's attempts to beef up security will become more familiar to the end user.

Centrify wants to deploy authentication factors that are seamless and secure for users, much like many SaaS solutions that leverage consumer level interfaces to make them easier to use. These types of measures not only make information more secure, it also helps save time, which makes employees more productive. Less time spent trying to figure out passwords, as well as less time spent retrieving lost information, makes for a more efficient workforce.

SaaS solutions are now commonplace across organizations, big and small. Prominent cloud offerings like Office365, have helped to drive more companies to consider cloud management as a viable option. As IT and chief executives weigh the pros and cons, their biggest concerns about security, access and control may be addressed by solutions like Centrify for SaaS.

What may have once seemed like too good to be true is now the current state of unified identity services across data center, cloud and mobile. That's great news for those who are actively managing users across devices and platforms, as well as for those who are only just attempting to figure it out.